Archive for the 'Neocon Decade' Category

Who better to know the realities behind the country’s permanent war economy than a former spear carrier for the empire? Chalmers Johnson, author of the Blowback trilogy and professor emeritus at UC San Diego spells out again what nobody lining their pockets in “defense” wants to hear. A national treasure speaks out on the squandering of the nation’s treasure.

Friend to RW370 WikiLeaks has released a video of a 2007 murder of two Reuters journalists and ten other civilians in Iraq by an US Army aircrew in an Apache helicopter overhead. The clip is major evidence of a cover-up of what can only be called (toward the end of the encounter) legitimized murder and maiming of civilians including children.

The justification for firing on the targets in this encounter is flimsy/arguable at the beginning (camera equipment carried by the men on the ground is visually mistaken for illegal heavy weapons) and nonexistent at the end (a van arrives to help a wounded victim, only to be blown apart by the enthusiastic gunner while two children sit in the van). The institutional culpability in the massacre is shown twice: first by the audio of the gunner and aircrew asking for and receiving permission to fire, and second by the cover-up in the years following.

WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange is interviewed below about the clip and the role of WikiLeaks in the release of the video. In a world that seems willing to do away with journalism – sometimes by 30mm cannon – Assange’s stance is especially poignant and heroic.

This Reddit thread contains a thoughtful discussion started and maintained by an active-duty US military officer (by the sound of it) on the specifics. It is impossible to read that thread and not come away with a clearer understanding of where the lines are drawn and were crossed – starting, but not ending with March, 2003.

It’s one thing to recognize capitalism for the powerful economic tool it is and to acknowledge that, for better or for worse, we’re stuck with it and, hey, thank God we have it. There’s not a lot else that can produce mass wealth with the dexterity that capitalism can. But to mistake it for a social framework is an incredible intellectual corruption and it’s one that the West has accepted as a given since 1980—since Reagan. Human beings—in this country in particular—are worth less and less. When capitalism triumphs unequivocally, labor is diminished. It’s a zero-sum game. People paid a much higher tax rate when Eisenhower was president, a much higher tax rate for the benefit of society, and all of us had more of a sense that we were included….I guess what I’m saying is that the overall theme was: We’ve given ourselves over to the Olympian god that is capitalism and now we’re reaping the whirlwind. This is the America that unencumbered capitalism has built. It’s the America that we deserve because we let it happen. We don’t deserve anything better. The Wire was trying to take the scales from people’s eyes and say, “This is what you’ve built. Take a look at it.” It’s an accurate portrayal of the problems inherent in American cities.

On October 1, 1969, Dr. Daniel Ellsberg, RAND corporation consultant to Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon found in his offices 7,000 pages marked Top Secret exposing a vast program of US government lies surrounding the Vietnam war. The report showed that without disclosure, the war had expanded to carpet bombing of Laos and Cambodia, that US combat troops had been sent by Lyndon Johnson independent of any consultation with advisors, that John Kennedy had actively sought to overthrow South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.

Ellsberg delivered proof of these and numerous other US foreign policy atrocities to the editorial offices of the New York Times. The Times 1971 publishing of the Pentagon Papers had a decisive effect on the ending of the Vietnam War and forever put to bed the idea that the US foreign policy establishment acts according to the will and with the assent of the people of the United States.

This week, the documentary film “The Most Dangerous Man In America” will hit screens, telling Ellsberg’s story. A whistleblower whose speaking truth to power cost him his career and possibly saved as many lives as his earlier work took in enabling the carpet bombing, he is a rare figure deserving of study and support. Particularly now, at a time when the climate for intellectuals who take democracy seriously is so unfavorable. Former RAND consultant and neo-conservative-cum-Wilsonian Francis Fukuyama illustrates that climate best when he frets about the role of the intellectual in the corridors of power. Despite being a chastised former cheerleader for the Iraq war – a war built upon lies endorsed by institutional intellectuals – Fukuyma recently invoked Ellsberg as a negative example. Some people just prefer intellectuals to be handmaidens to the institution:

I myself worked for more than ten years at the RAND Corporation, the original “think tank” satirized in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove that did contract research for the U.S. Air Force and Defense Department. Obviously, one cannot be a free thinker in a place like that (Daniel Ellsberg tried to be and he was fired), and that is one of the reasons that I eventually left to go to a university. But overall, I believe that a democracy is better off having intellectuals pay systematic attention to policy issues, even if it is occasionally corrupting. Having to deal not with ideal solutions but with the real world of power and politics is a good discipline for an intellectual. There is a fine line between being realistic and selling one’s soul, and in the case of the Iraq war many neoconservatives got so preoccupied with policy advocacy that they blinded themselves to reality. But it’s not clear that virtue necessarily lies on the side of intellectuals who think they are simply being honest.

It may not be clear to you, Francis, but it’s clear to me, and to millions.